Kacey Johansing has a voice strong enough to sell a million records without even trying; her lissome, jazzy vibrato radiates warmth and comfort. Entrusted to another person, such talent could easy fall prey to more straightforwardly poppy proscriptions, but thankfully Johansing doesn’t intend to be the next Norah Jones. Instead, the San Francisco based songwriter lends her vocal vim to introspective alt-folk compositions which spotlight the stunning clarity and emotion of her singing.

On June 15th, Johansing made her debut with a collection of eleven songs entitled Many Seasons. Released by Porto Franco Records, the album was three years in the making and establishes the twenty-five year old not as a promising talent, but as an artist who has already arrived. “Angel Island,” the record’s mellow, five-minute long third track, has Johansing crooning over a base of plaintive percussion and evanescent electric guitar. Where most songs draw their emotional heft from swells of instrumentation, “Angel Island” is powered by Johansing’s subtle vocal modulations. The whole thing is a resplendent reverie; it sweeps you off your feet and–ever so gently–sets you back down in reality when it whispers itself to a close.

The most immediately striking thing about “Zorbing,” a track from the young Oxford, England band Stornoway, is the strange barbershop quartet/gospel choir/sea chantey backing vocals that drop in from out of nowhere at the end of the first verse. In an era when indie bands are tossing industrial-size kitchen sinks into their arrangements, it takes ingenuity to be able to coax a “well, I wasn’t expecting that” reaction from listeners.

After that, the soaring melody of the verses and vocalist Brian Briggs’ clear, pure tenor kick in. When the trumpet swoops in towards the end, it’s clear that “Zorbing” is a fine new entry in the U.K. tradition of well-scrubbed folk-pop stretching back through James, The Housemartins and Del Amitri to early-1980s practitioners like Aztec Camera, Haircut 100, and The Bluebells. Roddy Frame, Edwyn Collins, or Nick Heyward would not be embarrassed to have the song in their catalogs.

In these days of fractured musical fandom, Stornoway’s hopes of reaching a larger audience are likely limited, which is a shame. 4AD completists will snatch them up, then wonder why they don’t really sound much like anything else on 4AD (which is releasing their debut LP, Beachcomber’s Windowsill, on August 8th), and fans of alt-folk in general will likely find them enjoyable. But in another era, they might have been huge–they’re talented, photogenic (the entire band is a preview of what the offspring of Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson will grow up to look like once they couple starts squeezing out young ‘uns), and immensely likeable. And with “Zorbing” they’ve written a song as good as “Love Plus One,” “Oblivious,” or any number of other clean-cut U.K. pop hits which are now considered classics.

At its core “Skinny Cow Blues” is a teenage pick up song that could have been plucked from Richard Linklater’s classic Dazed and Confused. You can almost hear Matthew McConaughey’s character saying, “You’ve got a nice last name / ask me to say it again / in the car.”

Instead it was written by David Dewese and Jerry James, two guys who call Texas and Nashville home, and for “Skinny Cow Blues,” geography is destiny. With pacing that is reminiscent of Pavement’s twangy “Gold Soundz,” the song uses piano and layered background vocals to soften the scratchy distortion of the lead vocals. The artful balance of acoustic melody and fuzzed-out electric guitar lines build tension as “Skinny Cow Blues” reaches its coda.

Dewese and James christened themselves The Foxymorons back in the mid-1990s when the two friends started making music together. The duo’s fourth long player, Bible Stories, will be released August 24th by Philadelphia label Heatstroke Records.

This coming Tuesday, Cincinnati indie rock act Enlou will release their third EP, Body of Friends, Body of Water, on Lujo Records. With this new effort, the quintet takes a serious stab at sneaking their way into the genre’s premier echelon of performers with a five track set that hints at the atmospheric flourishes of Band of Horses’ work, the west coast guitar vibe espoused by Surfer Blood, and a Shinsian, Grizzly Bearish facility with melodic hooks.

On the Body of Friends EP, Enlou rounds out their standard instrumentation with touches of sampled sounds and a bit of vibraphone, extending their sonic landscapes beyond the immediacy of their electric guitars. On “Amphibian,” the EP’s lead track, you can hear this airiness in its opening moments. For nearly half a minute, a spectral near silence hangs in the air like a fog before the first verse comes crashing in.

The quiet tease is worth the payoff, however, as the band expertly pairs charging rhythms with ringing guitars. Above it all are James Bishop’s vocals, which are wide ranging in tone and emotional without being trite or overwrought. There is a splendid sentimentality to “Amphibian,” which fluidly winds its way through distinctive moods before its crisp, satisfying closing.